Trek10: serverless from South Bend

FOUNDED 2013 · AWS PREMIER PARTNER · SOLD TO CAYLENT, OCTOBER 2025

The second wave's cleanest venture exit was a consultancy that bet everything on one cloud: Trek10 was founded by Andrew Warzon, Jim Abercrombie and Shane Fimbel — the year prints as its sources divide: the company's own ESTEEM-era profile and the Caylent and CRN accounts say 2013, while the Indiana Economic Development Corporation's success story says "early 2014" and a 2017 TechPoint profile likewise says 2014; the division is printed, not settled. Its first outside capital is documented by the state: in early 2015 Elevate Ventures invested 150,000 dollars of State Small Business Credit Initiative money as part of the company's initial outside funding. The bet was total specialization — Amazon Web Services only, no other clouds, no hardware — with an early emphasis on the serverless and event-driven architectures the firm helped make its name on. TechPoint's 2017 profile, when the company employed seventeen people mostly at its South Bend headquarters on East Angela Boulevard, placed it among about twenty firms worldwide holding AWS's DevOps competency and nine holding its IoT competency, with customers on five continents; the firm went on to the AWS Partner Network's highest tier, Premier.

The federal business grew beside the commercial one: Trek10's CloudOps managed service ran the Air Force's BESPIN software center, a partnership from 2019 that the company announced in March 2024 would continue under a 38-million-dollar award. The exit came on October 21, 2025, when Caylent — an Irvine, California AWS Premier partner backed by Gryphon Investors — announced it had acquired Trek10, Lazard advising the sellers; the price was not disclosed, and none is printed here. Ahead of the sale, Trek10's public-sector division was spun out as an independent company, TrekFed, which took the federal book — including prime position on a BESPIN ecosystem contract vehicle valued above 100 million dollars, per the trade record — out of the transaction. Shane Fimbel, by then Trek10's chief executive, stayed quotable in the buyer's release about what the combination unlocked. A South Bend consultancy founded on a dozen people's expertise ended the era as a named asset in a national roll-up: founded here, staffed here, bought for what it knew.

Sources:

1. Indiana Economic Development Corporation, SSBCI success story — Trek10 founded by Warzon, Abercrombie and Fimbel (the state's account says early 2014); Elevate Ventures' 150,000-dollar SSBCI investment of early 2015 as initial outside funding. iedc.in.gov
2. TechPoint, November 28, 2017 — the company at seventeen employees, South Bend headquarters, the AWS competency counts and the Premier ambition; the same profile dates the founding to 2014. techpoint.org
3. ESTEEM program, University of Notre Dame — Trek10 founded 2013 by the three named founders, in the program's industry-project record. nd.edu (esteem.nd.edu)
4. Trek10, March 21, 2024 (carried by TechPoint) — the 38-million-dollar BESPIN CloudOps award; the BESPIN partnership from 2019; the AWS Premier Tier standing and South Bend headquarters. techpoint.org
5. Caylent, press release, October 21, 2025 — the acquisition of Trek10 Inc.; Gryphon Investors' backing; Lazard as Trek10's adviser; terms not disclosed. caylent.com
6. OrangeSlices AI, October 30, 2025 — TrekFed, formerly Trek10's public-sector division, standing up as an independent company ahead of the acquisition, as prime on the BESPIN ecosystem vehicle. orangeslices.ai